A South African firm acting for a leading London jeweller, Moussaieff, has bought an extremely rare 39.19 carat rough blue diamond for $8.8 million. London-listed miner Petra Diamonds Ltd, which had placed the diamond on tender in Johannesburg, sold the gemstone, the company said in a statement released on Friday.
"Blue is one of the most rare colours of diamond and this exceptional stone is even more special due to its unusually large size," said Johan Dippenaar, CEO of Petra. Alisa Moussaieff, co-owner of Moussaieff, said she was confident the blue rough diamond would yield an exceptional polished gemstone.
"We will obtain a 15-carat polished, extremely fine blue diamond," she told Reuters by telephone from Israel on Friday. "Blue diamonds are rare and are getting rarer and rarer." She declined to give details on price, but said she believed she had paid a world-record high price for a rough blue diamond, and that it was the most magnificent example of a blue diamond to come onto the international market in 15 years.
Mrs Moussaieff, whose company has boutiques on London's Bond Street and in the London Hilton Hotel on Park Lane, said she expected the polished stone would ultimately go to an investor. Asked who might buy it, she told Reuters, "I would say investors - not necessarily people who want to wear it, not necessarily someone who wants to give it to a girlfriend, but cold-blooded investors."
She said that in spite of the present global financial crisis, she was confident that the blue diamond was so rare it would continue to appreciate in value and that the market for diamonds of this rarity was liquid. "For the last 15 years there hasn't been a blue of this quality on the market," said Mrs Moussaieff, who owns some of the rarest colour diamonds in the world, including blues and the celebrated 5.1-carat Moussaieff Red diamond.
Mrs Moussaieff said she expected that the 15-carat polished blue diamond would be of very high, "VVS" or "VS", quality. The rare stone was produced from the Cullinan mine in South Africa, renowned as the world's only significant source of highly prized blue diamonds. The South African agent which purchased the diamond for Moussaieff was Laub Diamond, a diamond market source said.